Medical Examination (for Immigration)

Medical examinations for migrants, asylum seekers, and other entrants are currently high on political and public health agendas in many countries around the world. In the USA, for example, the Secretary of Health and Human Services frames regulations under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Public Health Service Act, for the medical examination of migrants seeking admission to the USA. The Division of Global Migration and Quarantine provides the Department of State and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services with medical screening guidelines for all examining doctors. A medical examination is compulsory for all refugees going to the USA, all applicants applying for an immigrant visa, and for aliens applying to become permanent residents. Outside the USA, medical examinations are performed by around 400 selected doctors. Health-related grounds for ineligibility for visas or admission include communicable diseases, absence of documentation of vaccination, physical or...

Suggested Readings

Coker, R. (2004). Compulsory screening of immigrants for tuberculosis and HIV: Is not based on adequate evidence and has practical and ethical problems. British Medical Journal, 328, 298–300.PubMedCentralPubMedGoogle Scholar

Fairchild, A. L. (2003). Science at the borders: Immigrant medical inspection and the shaping of the modern industrial labor force. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar